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Noah.
I ran toward the doors, but was met with an unstoppable tide of people coughing and wheezing. My nose burned with the smell of tear gas and smoke, but I tried to stand my ground as party-goers swarmed past me like a hive full of angry, vengeful bees.
Once the crowd thinned, I wove through what remained, pulling my blazer up and over my mouth and nose, tears streaming from my eyes as I stumbled through the smoky interior of my office building.
I heard the crying of children, the sobs of Paulette, my sister uselessly demanding someone to freeze. I followed that sound until I made it to the room I’d left Noah in.
Standing in the doorway, I could barely make out the twiggy, shadowy figure I’d come to know so well. Curt Fowler stood with a gun in his hand and my son unconscious in his arms.
“Let him go, you bastard,” I snarled, advancing a step.
“Ah, ah,” Curt said, pressing the barrel of the gun to Noah’s chest. “Don’t take another step. This doesn’t need to get messy.”
I froze, caught between a rock and a hard place. I looked to my sister. Her lips curled back from her teeth, her hands empty of a firearm but flexing anxiously. He must have wrestled it away from her. I couldn’t just hope the weapon was a dud this time.
I put my hands up in surrender.
“What do you want?” I asked lowly. “You have your bargaining chip, so what do you want?”
“Hmm,” Curt said. “For starters, I think I want to make you a little miserable. I think I want to make you feel very miserable.”
My stomach twisted. “I’m not letting you take my son with you,” I said, hating the panic slipping into my voice so audibly. “Just…please. I’ll come with you. You can do anything you want with me, but leave my son here.”
He gave me a disgusted look. “I don’t want you,” he snarled. “A little pissant who’s too weak to even bat off the advances of a pathetic pregnant woman? Someone who will let someone act out and come after his so-called mate and his son?”
So that was it.
“You got a spy into my home,” I said, clenching my jaw.
“She was embarrassingly transparent,” he said. “Even I could smell it on her. And you didn’t even force her to leave. Never even punished her. And you think you can keep your pack safe? Marley safe? You’re delusional.”
He turned and started walking away.
“Wait, please,” I begged. “Please don’t take him. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything?” he asked, looking over at me with a sick smile.
My blood ran cold. I already knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Then give me your mate,” he sneered. “Show her just how little you plan on protecting her when it comes to your son. Show her how ready you are to throw her away. Give her to me and leave this town with your son. Leave the leadership to those of us who can actually stomach what it takes.”
An impossible choice. And one I couldn’t even rightfully make. Marley wasn’t mine to give. Not in the way that Curt meant, anyway. She wasn’t a possession. She wasn’t a car with a pink slip that I could transfer to someone else.
But Noah was my son, and if he left that door with Curt, I couldn’t be sure that I would ever see his curls or his beautiful eyes ever again. I couldn’t know what would follow. What Curt might do to him.
I didn’t know what to do. I lost either way. Either way, my life was over.
It felt like eons passed as I stood there, utterly useless as Curt kept his gun pressed to Noah.
Distantly, the sound of sirens went off, and Curt shook his head. “You’re even more pathetic than Lelani,” he sneered. “Time’s up.”
Then, he simply turned and left the room through a sliding door.
Leaving me alone with my utter, immeasurable failure.
Chapter 16
Marley
